This past Sunday evening, the "Daniel Stepner Baroque Project" closed a weekend of musical exploration, instruction and appreciation at Brandeis. As the final performance in a series of concerts during the Fiddle'Deis music festival, the "Baroque Project" provided a graceful conclusion to the weekend.

The "Baroque Project" was sponsored by the Brandeis Department of Music and featured several distinguished musicians: Prof. Daniel Stepner (MUS), Julie Leven and Danielle Maddon played baroque violins; Laura Jeppesen played the baroque viola and viola da gamba; Guy Fishman played the baroque cello; Anne Trout played the violone; and Charles Sherman played the harpsichord.

The Fiddle'Deis festival was organized into an itinerary of performances and workshops that allowed attendees to come away from the weekend having not only experienced a niche of musical culture but also having learned about the history behind the fiddle as an instrument. The concerts were organized in a specific order so that the greater collection of pieces that were performed fell into a chronological progression that lead audiences through the history of fiddle music. Starting the weekend with a performance called "Welcome Jam" that featured Scottish, Irish, Old-Time and Bluegrass traditional songs, the progression concluded at the "Baroque Project," at which the performed pieces were selected from the Baroque period.

The "Baroque Project" was performed in the warm, resonant atmosphere of the Slosberg Recital Hall. Even though it was not particularly heavily attended, the other events throughout the weekend had already drawn a great number of audience members. Just after 7 p.m., the group of musicians took the stage, positioned spaciously about the large performance area so that each musician in the group stood apart from the rest when they began playing. The group played a total of four pieces, showcasing Baroque pieces from several prominent composers of the period.

A lively rendition of "Three Parts upon a Ground," a work of English composer Henry Purcell, kicked off the concert, illustrating the exceptional range of emotional depth that the violin and its family of instruments are capable of conveying. Three violins were central to this piece, accompanied by a harpsichord and a violone, together creating a harmonically complex work. Until the theme of the song was established, the minor keys involved in variations on the theme were a bit dissonant at moments as the three violins harmonized, but the piece was overall both pleasant to listen to and a wonderful representation of the Baroque style. "Three Parts upon a Ground" transitioned from a shaky minor key harmony to a joyous, bombastic major key sound and finally ended in an emotionally contemplative minor and major key harmony that drew in the audience effortlessly.

The musicians moved on to perform three more Baroque period pieces before the end of the night. Italian composer and violinist Pietro Locatelli's Concerto grosso ("Il pianto d'Ariana"), Op. 7, No. 6 followed "Three Parts upon a Ground." The group then played German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach's "Concerto in D Major" and concluded the performance with a piece by modern American composer Leroy Anderson named "Fiddle-Faddle."

As Stepner said at the beginning of the performance, "There was song, there was dance and then there was fiddling." An elegant closing to a remarkable weekend of musical festivities, the "Baroque Project" both educated and entertained attendees and was an exceptional performance to see.
*